Chronology of Election Frauds and Result Manipulation in SDA

By Amina Čorbo Zećo

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The 'Asim' affair, as the media called it, revealed to the general public how people, employment, appointments, and positioning are 'arranged' within the largest party in BiH, and the largest Bosniak party in our country. Elections have long been compromised and are merely a farce, while results are manipulated in this manner. 

What is a particular problem is when this is the model of behavior in the largest, ruling party, and it is thus mirrored in the entire social and political system of the country. And how did it all start in SDA, when did people first start talking about this? 

After the founder and first president of SDA, Alija Izetbegović, as an unquestionable authority in this party, withdrew from his positions, Sulejman Tihić was elected president at the Congress in 2001. He had an opponent, Abdulah Nakaš, but Tihić won by a majority of votes and took over the leadership of SDA. There were no objections to the electoral process. Tihić led the party until his death in September 2014, and in 2009, his opponents were Bakir Izetbegović and Adnan Terzić. The team gathered around Bakir, as the Congress approached, began spreading rumors in public that they would be cheated at the Congress, and Tihić, although the Statute gave him the right to propose, and the Party Presidency to appoint 3 members of the SDA Election Commission, 'disarmed' Bakir and his associates by inviting Bakir and Terzić to jointly propose one member of the SDA Election Commission each, thus ensuring transparency and confidence in the Congress results. Under such conditions, he convincingly defeated Izetbegović again and continued to lead SDA.

After that, he even allowed the defeated Bakir Izetbegović to be the SDA candidate for the Presidency of BiH, which was his ticket to return to the top, and after that, to take over SDA. Meanwhile, Tihić fell ill, and Bakir Izetbegović gradually took over the party more and more, and at the SDA Convention in 2013, he was appointed Deputy President of SDA. From then on, a different value system began, and open violations of electoral rules and the manipulation of his cadres within SDA, which resulted in a brutal theft at the 2015 Congress, when Bakir Izetbegović was 'elected' president of SDA. 

The first high-ranking SDA official who publicly spoke about the thefts and manipulations of compliant and obedient cadres within SDA was the then Vice-President and Director of the SDA Political Academy, Senad Šepić. This happened during the elections in the SDA Youth Association, which were held seven days before the SDA Congress. At these elections, SDA youth got into a fight after they caught an older colleague close to the then Secretary General Amir Zukić and the President of the Cadre Commission Asim Sarajlić trying to insert multiple ballots, marked with the name of one of the candidates, into the ballot box. Šepić immediately demanded that the Collegium and Presidency of SDA meet and that those involved in this be sanctioned, and that the SDA Election Commission that conducted these elections be changed, as the same commission was supposed to conduct the electoral process at the SDA Congress to be held in seven days, after that event. 

Bakir Izetbegović completely ignored this request, and Šepić published his disagreement and opposition to such a method of election within SDA on his FB profile, which some media outlets reported. He wanted to point out and prevent such negativity at the Congress itself in a timely manner, inviting Izetbegović to ensure confidence in the electoral process and allow other candidates to propose a member of the Election Commission, as Sulejman Tihić had once allowed him.  

However, Bakir Izetbegović rejected such a proposal, the composition of the Election Commission was his, and Šepić, punished by being brutally robbed at that Congress and eliminated from the party's leadership, and subsequently expelled from the party. How theft and manipulation occurred at that time is shown by a video that is still on YouTube under the title 'Argument at the SDA Congress'. Although it is clear to everyone that the Congress was a farce and that they stole from their closest party colleagues, Bakir Izetbegović never allowed this issue to be opened in SDA bodies, and he gradually removed everyone who pointed out these electoral irregularities from the party. 

He surrounded himself with obedient and close cadres and was elected by acclamation at the last Congress, without an opponent. For the first time since SDA was founded, they first organized the Congress and elected the president, and then proceeded to elections at lower levels, in municipalities, cities, and cantons. In this way, the entire process was controlled by the president, and if different desires appeared in the field, as was the case in the KO SDA Sarajevo, then 'the one closest to him' got involved and 'arranged' things according to his and his wife's wishes, who in such a 'democratic' environment was 'elected' as vice-president of the KO, and those who know the situation in SDA better say, the actual head of SDA in Sarajevo.

With this couple, the chronology of election and congress thefts in SDA began and will apparently end. What is useful in all of this is that the public was able to hear and see how things work in the largest Bosniak party in BiH, so let them remember this when the next elections come.